For mojo. 288 comments


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Today is the memorial service for one of our most beloved posters, Lesli Buchanan, known around here as westxmojo777.

I am not going to lie and say I knew her well. I didn’t. She has a long history with many of you, going back to friendships she made on MLB.com. I wish I would have known her better.

What I can say is, she had an infectious positivity that is very rare. She loved her Rangers, and didn’t like it when anyone spoke badly about them. She didn’t like quarrelling and bickering. And wouldn’t stand for crassness or cursing.

She was a good soul.

I bumped into this site a few months into its existence. She was a regular poster. I came to notice that a lot of other posters had altered their screen names to include the word “mojo” in them. At first, I thought it was some sort of Rangers Rounding 3rd thing. I soon found out it was bigger than that. It was a show of solidarity for mojo, because she was fighting cancer. It was the blogging equivalent of friends shaving their heads to show support for a loved one going through chemo.

I found that to be pretty remarkable.

Think about that. This thing we call the internet, and blogging, and posting, is anonymous. For the most part, we don’t know one another at all, and never really will, other than through words we post and share about our favorite baseball team.

She had to be a pretty special person to have that many people—people who don’t even know her—gravitate toward her and pour our their hearts to her.

How many times did people log on here and the first thing they asked was, “Has anyone heard from mojo today?”

Then, when she did pop on, people rallied around her like she was a rock star. Everyone asked how she was doing. Everyone cared.

Remarkable.

It happened nearly every day. People genuinely cared about her here. Deeply. That is a testament to this wonderful site Twig built, and the wonderful people who come here every day.

It’s cliché to say that many here were her internet family, but it’s true. For that I just want to say how humbled I am to know so many of you. You truly are good people.

And to those of you going to her memorial service at Wylie Baptist Church in Abilene today, God bless you. Lesli died May 6, 2015, at the age of 56.

My oldest sister died of cancer five weeks ago, I wouldn’t understand how it took her so fast, I did research in websites, books and even found all about the Psoriasis Symptoms Inspire talks a and helps with all the content involving this type of cancer. It wrecked me. I still think about her, daily. She lived in Cleveland, and I made numerous trips there toward the end, for which I am always going to be thankful. I was able to say goodbye to her.

To be honest, I didn’t want to go that last time. She was so emaciated that she didn’t look anything like the sister I knew. I didn’t want to remember her that way. But I am so glad I went. I got to say goodbye.

That is an awful thing.

I won’t be so presumptuous and say I know what mojo’s family was or is going through, because I do not know them. But I suspect it is similar. Watching someone they love slip away, day by day, is a terrible thing.

Here is a little something I wrote for my sister, and delivered at her memorial service. I want to share it for mojo and her loved ones, and everyone here who knew her. I hope it in some way brings a bit of peace:

“It’s a sad thing to watch a person’s mind going strong while her body has grown too weak to go on. It’s a sad thing to watch a person’s spirit continue to fight long after her body has given up. It’s a sad thing to watch someone give every ounce of energy to a struggle she cannot possibly win, and you cannot do anything to stop it. But the joy that you got to know her, you got to make her laugh uncontrollably, you got to hear her tell you you were an idiot, you got to hear her tell you she loves you, you got to bask in the light of her inexhaustible goodness, you got to call her your sister, your daughter, your aunt, your friend, you got to hug her goodbye–that joy will always outlive the sadness, because that joy, and the goodness it was born from, are too strong to ever extinguish. Goodbye. Thanks for always being there for me. Thanks for always laughing at my dumb jokes. I will always miss you. I’ll see you later.”

February 12th was mojo’s last post here. Like always, it was a positive one. It was in response to someone gushing over Rangers young second baseman Roughned Odor. She left three final words:

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That’s our mojo. Positive to the very end.

Rest in peace, Lesli.